Paric Colum’s Diary

4 Sept 2012

0

I’d like to thank the council for heralding my debut in the newspaper. It isn’t often that a writer gets an estate named after him before he’s even begun his career. I’m not going to say it hasn’t heaped pressure on me but...

I’d like to thank the council for heralding my debut in the newspaper. It isn’t often that a writer gets an estate named after him before he’s even begun his career. I’m not going to say it hasn’t heaped pressure on me but...

So Roz Purcell’s Cashel defeated Ballinora from Cork to get through to the, ahem, All-Ireland semi-final in Celebrity Bainisteoir. A fantastic win for the Cashel boys no doubt (and a vindication of Roz’s tactical revolution there, as well as her shrewd promise to wear her bikini into training in the event of victory) but it was helped by the extraordinarily successful attempt of Ballinora boss Jessica Lawlor to sabotage her team by threatening them with a night out on the town with her boyfriend Stephen Ireland should they win. Lawlor, a woman who does need an introduction it has to be said, either clearly wanted out of the competition, or was got at by Malaysian bookmakers, and her team, unsurprisingly cowed by the ultimatum hanging over their heads, put in a limp performance and went down by four points. Still well done to Cashel.

The hair restoration propoganda machine is in full swing, bigging up the disastrous consequences of hair loss (It was they who were responsible for turning Bobby Charlton’s combover, previously considered the height of fashion, into something that was somehow unfashionable).

DHI Hair Restoration have conducted a poll on hair loss in Leinster which has produced some unsurprisingly grave results which, not coincidentally, may aid DHI Hair Restoration in their attempts to generate more business.

Apparently 40% of men in Leinster are experiencing some form of hair loss. 94% of men have reported a drop in their self-confidence on account of said baldness, resulting in them becoming shy and ineffectual in social situations.

In other news, rumours are circulating that Gillette and Wilkinson Sword commissioned studies have found that men with facial hair are more likely, among other things, to suffer from low self-esteem, to be overlooked for promotion, to be unsuccessful with women, to lose any sporting prowess they had, to bite their tongue while eating, to get their fingers caught in doors, to fall down flights of stairs , to become ‘known to the Gardai’, to be caught speeding, to not be able to hold alcohol...

Dublin exit the championship and Mickey Whelan’s comments last week about Dublin waiting to peak until the latter stages of the championship appear to be fatally undermined. Unless of course they were waiting until just September to peak... a dangerous, remarkably cocky game to play, but one that other sides have fallen into. Longford, in the 1990s, for instance, used to try to peak for September, with the result that they often took their eyes off the First Round of the Leinster Championship. A tendency which proved to be their downfall. Seven years in a row in fact.

In our “Longford films that should have been made” section we have Citizen Keane, a touching riches-to-rags tale about a Co Longford small farmer who through blood, toil, sweat and most importantly political connections amassed a great fortune which he subsequntly lost when losing the run of himself in the mid noughties like any self-respecting property developer. Through it all, however, he still maintains that Carrick-on-Shannon needed that fourth shopping centre.

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